Not a whole lot of new, but I am finally – FINALLY – getting to work some facial expressions. I spent most of my time remodeling and re-rigging it as the old older file was kind of a hack job (the learning curve) and a pain to work with.

Just some updates to my progress here, I’m nearly done with her remodeled uniform. I decided to use the topology of her body to create the clothing (copied vertices), which reduced my need to rig them later with the armature since I can just copy the weight paint from the body.

I dig the rib-length jacket. Nobody gives those enough credence, I think.

You’re doing, pretty much, exactly what I should be doing.

Bolero (short jacket). Something I learned from my GF, having a few of them herself of which inspired the one on my model. Though normally they’re a bit more dressy, and typically have shorter sleeves, at least hers do.

I also messed around with the armature as I was getting sick of the bad deforms, toggling maintain volume and constantly shifting the weight paint around. Instead I decided to add more bones in areas with bad deforms to preserve volume in certain areas and it effin’ worked.

It was just a hunch and a couple of hours of redoing the rig, but ended up paying off big as automatic weights now apply perfectly to the model with no editing required.

I particularly hate bone weight painting, so if there’s anything I can do to avoid it, I will go there.

Bolero - I guess you could say it’s one of those, but it doesn’t have the bullfighter flair here, more of an ultra-modern utopia feel; like it has more utility than just being a snazzy accessory. Like it’s bullet-proof or WiFi capable.

I particularly hate bone weight painting, so if there’s anything I can do to avoid it, I will go there.

Bolero - I guess you could say it’s one of those, but it doesn’t have the bullfighter flair here, more of an ultra-modern utopia feel; like it has more utility than just being a snazzy accessory. Like it’s bullet-proof or WiFi capable.

I had responded with a slightly detailed post yesterday, but now it’s gone.

Edited –

What I basically did was add more (non-connected) bones in areas that shrink when deforming it with the armature. These added bones helped to keep the volume of those areas resulting in me not having to deal with any weight painting on the body.

And since I created her clothing from vertices copied from her body, I just transferred the weights over to them and they deform as well as her body does. Though with some clothing, especially being scaled up more than her body, I had to deal with minor weight painting but nothing that’s hair pulling.

There’s no way I’m ever going to get the right amount of bones and weight paint to create the perfect pose without everything intersecting, so I decided to just apply the armature’s pose and edit the vertices to fix the bad deforms. I guess I should have thought of this to begin with to save a couple of months of headaches, and it’s probably what everyone else already does – but that’s what I get for not asking.

I didn’t get a chance to remodel the boots yet, so you get to see her yucky feet. I don’t like feet.

After a small break (no thanks to the winter holidays and related obligations) I finally got back to Blender. After reviewing this character, I decided I wanted to give her a more anime-like body, while keeping her face as it was. I do want the anime look and feel, but I don’t want the typical anime face, and definitely not the moe character style.

You’ll see she’s much more slender in some areas, and curvier in others, more stylized. The original model’s body was based on human-ish proportions, this one more on the anime side. Artistically, I am inspired by 80s style anime, and hope to create a look and feel closer to that, of course with a modern look in comparison.

Finally got her uniform refitted to her new body. Having issues with the skirt however, automatic weights no longer work on it as it did on the old body. Anyone have any ideas why? I did import the uniform from the old file into the new one, and removed the armature it came with, applied scale and such. But no luck with the new armature. It’s driving me mad.

I’m liking the new body much more, seems much less stocky, and a bit more stylized than before.

Now that my model is nearly complete (just needs a few small details), I’ve took some time to experiment with mixing both the Toon and Diffuse shaders to create a soft cell shading/cg effect with light and shadows, and I’m starting to like it.

Since I’m only posting renders of this one character, I thought it was more of a WIP than a sketchbook. When I’m ready to pump out various artworks using Blender, then I’ll create an actual useful Sketchbook.

I’ve been working on flowy hair (maybe I’ll use some physics) and currently creating shape keys to rig facial expressions. I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible in order to create more female characters from this one template.